TikTok, BTS, coloring books, skinny jeans – so many things aimed at young people are also big hits with adults. The same goes with YA novels – The Sun Is Also A Star, One Of Us Is Lying, The Hate U Give, The Hunger Games – adults around the world are reading these and many more books aimed at teenagers. But why?
For me, reading young adult books reminds me what it was like to be a teenager. Balanced on the edge between childhood and adulthood – the teenage years are an exhilarating and terrifying time. As a teenager, at times I was painfully shy, brashly confident, terribly sheltered and heartbreakingly shattered by the truths of the world I was just beginning to experience. I remember everything seemed monumental because I was unsure of who I was and what to believe as my world changed as I progressed from childhood to adulthood. I saw the realities of the world around me that throughout childhood had either been hidden from me from well-meaning adults or obscured by my own lack of experience. And all the hormonal and physical changes my body was going through didn’t make anything any easier!
I enjoy reading YA books because I can experience all the emotion and adventure teen characters face from the safe distance of adulthood. It’s almost two stories told at once – the passionate and urgent teen narrative and the one viewed through the lens of adulthood. The YA stories I love the best are those I can see both sides of the narrative. As adults we often take for granted the luxury of feeling confident, or knowing who we are, or the comfort of having a plan. It’s refreshing to read about a character who is back at the beginning of their life with a myriad of choices to make. I don’t ever want to go back there again in real life, but I love to visit through stories
In THE RISE AND FALL OF DANI TRUEHART, the troubling family dynamic of the Truehart family was a really important aspect for me to convey and I enjoyed experiencing all of Dan’s trials both as an adult and as my teenage character. All families face adversity and challenges, but the Truehart’s special brand of dysfunction is a key aspect of the series. Family and home are where many teens spend much of their time, developing their voice and safely testing their boundaries against authority. If a home is not harmonious or a family member negatively dominates the emotional dynamic of the family, it can be an overwhelming experience. Many teens don’t yet have an established voice they can use stand up for themselves, or have the courage to say no to a parent that is clearly making bad choices for them, or maybe even realize a parent is doing something that is not in their child’s best interest. Exploring that vulnerability and the innate trust that a child has in a parent was an emotional and thrilling experience as a writer. As a parent, I was horrified by the choices Jodi and Don were making, but it is becauseI am now a parent, that I can appreciate even more the awful impact of Jodi’s drive for success and Don’s inability to protect his daughter.
Trust is another theme I look for in my favorite young adult books and is another theme in my series. As we grow and change from children to adults, there’s usually a transition of values and beliefs. Maybe we stop taking what adults say at face value and opt look at things a little deeper, maybe the opinions of our friends weigh more heavily than that of our parents, or maybe long held beliefs, such as religion or family values, are tested or abandoned if they no longer fit our broadening minds and expanding experiences. Stories where there is betrayal from long standing friends or a family member, or a rude awakening when a loftily held person or ideal topples from their pedestal under the weight of the mundane demands of everyday life are some of my favorite ‘trust’ themes because they are so earth-shatteringly transforming. Yet every teenager faces something like this in one way or another as they let go of the fairy tales and make-believe of childhood and look towards their future and who they are choosing to be as adults. Dani and many of the characters in my series grapple with shifting trust in their relationships. Weighing what Dani wants against what she has to do in order to achieve her goals, making decisions based on her values rather than what other people say, questioning the motives of people around her who are advising her on big life decisions – all are themes I deal with over the course of the series. Trust goes hand and hand in with honesty. One of the hardest lessons to learn growing up is that honesty can be a flexible value for some people.
Young adult books remind me of what life was like before things got complicated as an adult with a job, marriage, kids, aging…I think it’s important to remember what being a teen is like so we can give the teens in our lives a little breathing room to grow into who they want to be, a safe space in which to succeed or fail and the confidence to know that trying, even if you fail, is the bravest thing you can do.
Happy Tuesday.💕